Don't toss that

When you know slang words in other dialects of English, some things are unintentionally funny.
[Source]

A bank killer of a financial move

In November 2021, I refinanced the mortgage on our Hawaii house. We locked in a 1.99% interest rate on the remaining principal (~$590k) for 30 years.

Fast forward to today, and Republic First bank has gone gone into receivership. Why? Because in 2021, "Previous leadership invest[ed] heavily in long-duration securities with low fixed interest rates." As interest rates have risen since then, those securities have declined in value.
Then, in 2022, Republic First "grew [its] jumbo mortgage portfolio at below-market interest rates." Although our refinance was through a different lender, that very well describes what we did to the bank we refinanced with. We locked got a fixed, jumbo mortgage at what is now a below market rate. Not just below market, but below the current inflation rate.

Whether or not that situation is widespread, or if it represents a serious threat to the banking industry, only time will tell. Regardless, it represents one of the few time, to paraphrase Danny Ocean, when I've had the perfect hand, and I've bet big, and taken the house.

Sometimes history books just plain make stuff up

There are three things to consider when reading a history book:

1. Is this true?
2. Is this representative?
3. How was this supposed to make me feel?

It sounds strange that blatantly false things might be in a history book, but sometimes "false facts" are too interesting to leave out.

For example, the official textbook for 7th graders in Texas is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Texas History (2016). [Source]

On page 90, when describing the importance of salt and spices to Europeans, it says salt was brought to Europe from Asia and Africa, and that "One pound of salt could cost as much as two pounds of gold!" But that's just plain stupid. "From a logical standpoint, the price of salt exceeding the price of gold (at ANY point in history) just doesn’t make sense." You can get salt from the ocean, which [surprise!] COMPLETELY SURROUNDS EUROPE, whereas gold required great effort to find, mine, and refine. [Source]

You may think this is not really a big deal -- that it's OK to use hyperbole if it keeps kids interested -- but I'm of the opinion that history books are supposed to teach facts, not made-up stories.

So as strange as it sounds, when reading a Texas grade school history book, you actually have to fact check it.

Home is where der Herd is

Our stove broke, and I had to call the manufacturer to come fix it. Step 1: learn how to say "my stove" (I already knew the "ist kaput" part).
It's "mein Herd."

Which is easy to remember not because of the word for a bunch of cows, but because German Ds are often THs in English, and we have the word "hearth."

In English it's archaic because we don't put fireplaces in the middle of our houses to both heat and cook with anymore, but German retains it in common usage.

It's like a thousand year-old word but it's just as useful today as it was then.

Phone ... or phone?

Today, I wanted to make a phone call, and my phone asked:

1. Whether I wanted to use my phone ... or my phone, and
2. If it was just this once, or always.

Most advanced technology of any century in history, and this is what I'm dealing with.

Oversimplified to the point of falsity

My daughter is learning about the causes of World War I.
Unfortunately, she's learning lies.

For example, why did Italy betray its Triple Alliance partners and side with Britain and France? As this worksheet explains, "Italy's reasoning was that the Triple Alliance was a defensive alliance, but Germany and Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive." That's garbage. The reason Italy went with Britain and France is because of the territorial concessions it was promised in the 1915 Treaty of London. [Source]

The distinction may seem innocuous, but it's important for understanding the causes of World War II. During the peace conference, Woodrow Wilson's insistence on self-determination denied Italy those concessions; the broken promises fed Italy's sense of grievance. [Source]

Later, Mussolini seized on that and cast himself as the one who could make Italy great again, despite having "won" its most recent war. [Source]

Unfortunately, when it comes to the causes for WW1, even for college-level students there's a 10 minute version, and then there's a semester-long version. Given the time constraints of an 8th grade U.S. history class, teachers invariably have to go with the former. They just don't have time for a fuller explanation of the truth.

In that sense, history is like physics. You have to learn about the Bohr model of the atom (which is wrong) before you can learn about electron clouds. And you have to understand Newtonian physics (which is wrong) before you can understand Einstein's ideas about gravity warping time and space.

So while I would *love* for history classes to "just teach the facts," the reality is that there are simply too many, and in the rush to get through the material, we lie to students.

Is there anything we can do about that?
Well, maybe we should be honest about it at the beginning.

Imagine a teacher saying, "Most of what I'm going to teach you is true, but many things are oversimplifications that hide details that become important later. Some things might be true, but are isolated incidents that don't represent a bigger picture. Other things have been chosen so that you get a positive impression of our nation's history, while still more have been left out for the same reason."

Despite it being the truth, I imagine that person would get fired pretty quickly.

History is just as much what we "don't* teach

A while back my daughter watched the movie "Hidden Figures" in her social studies class. It's about three black women who worked as computers at NASA in the 1960s, a time when it was segregated by race.

These days she is learning about Woodrow Wilson, the role of the U.S. in World War I, and Wilson's Fourteen Points.

But what's interesting is what she /isn't/ learning about -- the connection between Woodrow Wilson and that segregated federal government that Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson worked in.

Because it was Woodrow Wilson who segregated it.

By the time Wilson took office in 1913, the federal government had been integrated for nearly 50 years. This enabled "African Americans to obtain federal jobs and work side by side with whites in government agencies. [But] Wilson promptly authorized members of his cabinet to reverse this long-standing policy of racial integration in the federal civil service." [Source]

Black employees were fired, moved to positions where they would not interact with the public, and "in 1914 [Wilson] instituted a policy requiring federal job seekers to attach photographs to their applications." As you can guess, this was to weed out black applicants.

In addition, Wilson appointed southern whites to positions traditionally reserved for black appointees. His administration used the Red Scare as an excuse to undermine black newspapers, organizations, and union leaders. And he segregated the navy, which had not previously been segregated, relegating African Americans to kitchen and boiler work. [Source]

My daughter's class is not learning any of that.
They're only learning about Wilson's role as a great leader.
And I'm convinced there's a reason why.

Something I've learned as an adult is that your priorities guide your decisions, and your decisions *reveal* your priorities. I think the same is true with history textbook content.

Everything that's in a history textbook reflects either a decision by the author or a priority for a school board member. Textbooks get selected based on how well their content matches a school board's priorities. So if you put in commentary next to the Second Amendment that mentions limitations on gun rights, it might get accepted in California, but it certainly won't pass muster in Texas. [Source]

Those kinds of content decisions, when taken together, provide interesting insights into what our *real* priorities are for our education system.

Do we want students who understand the injustices of the past, and can make critical evaluations of present day public policy?

Or do we simply want students to grow up thinking, as we were taught, that the United States has been an ever-progressing, exceptionally righteous nation -- one where our leaders can be trusted to make the right decision?

We can answer that however we want, but our *real* priorities are revealed by our decisions. And what we *decide* to omit from our history classes speaks louder than what comes out of our mouths.